Pieday Friday – Beef & Pancetta Lasagne

_{Some items have been gifted}

Today I’d like to share with you a delicious lasagne recipe that I tried out over the bank holiday weekend. My husband and I actually baked this dish together on Easter Sunday and were tucking into the tasty Italian treat by lunchtime, and let me tell you – it was amazing! I’m not blowing my own trumpet and I can’t take credit for this recipe, but I can tell you where I found it.I received ‘The Branded Cookbook’ by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton for Christmas, which includes recipes using famous food brand sauces, tins, preserves and condiments. I will of course be letting you know how I get on with these recipes over the coming months, but ever since I was given this book by husband, I’ve realised the value of using classic brands in my cooking and that I don’t have to cook everything from scratch to achieve a great flavour.So I’ve recently been searching online for more recipes using classic brands such as Heinz or Lea & Perrins, and I found a stash of simple recipes on the website of this famous sauce. I picked out this beef lasagne recipe to try out first and gathered the ingredients together ready to create our Easter meal.As I started to follow the recipe I realised that a few additional ingredients, such as pancetta, red wine and (of course) Lea & Perrins, would result in an extra-special dish packed full of flavour. I also used a sun-dried tomato puree rather than a regular paste, and I’m sure this added a delicious sweetness to the whole dish. Even though I’ve made lasagne countless times in the past, I’ve never made a ‘proper’ white sauce so I really enjoyed infusing the milk with an onion studded with cloves and bay leaves. I felt like a real chef as I whisked up the roux and spread it onto the lasagne layers with parmesan and fresh basil leaves. With the fragrance of Italy filling the kitchen as the lasagne baked in the oven for 30 minutes, we couldn’t wait to tuck into the most flavoursome dish of our holiday. I recommend that you try it out for yourself this weekend – here’s the link to the recipe and ingredients list on the Lea & Perrins website – and there’s even a step-by-step tutorial video on You Tube to make the dish so it really couldn’t be more simple to try it out at home. Let me know how you get on!

Some items in this blog post have been gifted to me and the pink links indicate a gifted product, affiliate link or information source. All thoughts and opinions in this post are based on my own experience and I am not responsible for your experience 🙂